How SPACELAB9 Nearly Made Me Cry: An Open Letter Revealing One Walking Dead Collector’s Story of Tenacity, Determination and Epic Failure

Dear SpaceLab9,

I hate you. I hate your limited edition, vinyl pressing guts. Now before you go and sic your lawyers on me: relax. Have a seat. I’m only partially serious. Tell your attorney this isn’t “slander”, “libel”, “defamation” or any of those other legal terms I can never keep straight. I’m getting off track. I should probably start from the beginning.

It all started when I heard SpaceLab9 was bringing The Walking Dead Original Soundtrack: Volume 1 to vinyl. How cool! As a single parent on a budget I’m trying to be responsible though. “You don’t need it”, I told myself.  I was prepared to let things go and carry on with life. Then it happened. I discovered there was a super rare limited edition “Zombie Flesh Green” colored version. Oh Sh*t. I could feel my palms sweat and my eye twitch. No problem. I can control myself.  I got this.

This isn’t any ordinary “limited edition” that consists of a few thousand pieces though. No sir, this special variant is limited to just 200 copies. To make matters worse it is, or better stated, was available only via spacelab9.com. The OCD Walking Dead collector in me went ballistic. Two hundred copies? Green? Limited Edition? Although I knew this could only end badly, I decided I had to own at least one copy.

So I did my research. I discovered I had no idea how much a super ultra-rare pressing of The Walking Dead on vinyl limited to only a couple hundred copies would cost. I also discovered I have no idea what “Zombie Flesh Green” or the final product even looks like. None of it mattered by this point. By now the collector in me was rabidly foaming at the mouth. I knew well ahead of time the Spacelab9.com website opened for pre-orders at 1:00 pm EST on April 1st. Target acquired.

Fast forward to April 1^st at approximately 11:00 am.  I know what you’re thinking. I’m fully aware when the pre-order starts. I know they said 1:00 pm EST but . . .  better safe than sorry. I checked the Spacelab9 website just to be sure. Of course there was absolutely no early start on the pre-order sale. I wasn’t expecting one, but you know. . . better safe than sorry. I checked back more times than I care to admit after that. Clear through the noon hour the Spacelab9 website worked like a charm.

Shortly after noon things started to go downhill. All the other collectible hungry fans bombarded the site. Right around 12:45 pm or so the floodgates opened.  Or at least that’s when I first noticed it. I could see your website servers taking the blow and buckling at the knees from the start, Spacelab9. What started out as “this page sure is loading slowly” got worse in a hurry.

Let me point out this isn’t a criticism of you or your site. I run websites. I get it. Your server was taking a beating from a horde of vinyl hungry freaks.  Believe me the server where this humble little site limps along probably couldn’t handle a fraction of the traffic you saw that day. You seriously underestimated the power of thousands of crazed Walking Dead fans tearing at one another in a frantic and desperate effort to actually pay a fair retail price for a rare Walking Dead collectible. We’re Walking Dead collectors. You have NO idea to what lengths we will go. Your little website didn’t stand a chance.

I’m pretty sure we brought your server (and at least one IT guy) to tears. I’m convinced he simply unplugged and huddled in a shaking, weeping mess in the corner.  I’ve never seen such a brutal assault on one unsuspecting domain. We frantically clicked refresh and mashed our F5 keys. We opened multiple tabs on multiple devices. We. Just. Wanted. Our. Damn. Zombie. Flesh. Green. Vinyl.

I will say your little slice of real estate on the World Wide Web put up quite a fight.  Your site and server chugged, churned, huffed and puffed. I think I can. I think I can. There were brief spurts of functionality. I held out hope. After all, I did everything right. There was no possible way for me to miss out on this.

I was there the very instant the site went live and started accepting pre-orders.  There was no way I was going to let some newbie show up late to the party and get the girl. I just knew I could mash in my order between timeouts and crashes.

There it is! Like the hunter I am, I found my opening and took it. I clicked “Add to Cart” and then it started: the endless spinning of loading icons and the infinite, “waiting for spacelab9.com” messages. Then came the 503 error messages, the timeouts, and even a couple weird messages I’ve never encountered before. At one point I even saw a message that I was logged in as username I’ve never even seen before. I could almost smell the server sizzle.

After about 45 minutes of retrying, refreshing and waiting I managed to get the site to cooperate enough to get all the items added to my cart successfully. Yes! Still in the game.

I fought tooth and nail and managed to get everything in my cart before things sold out. Now it’s time to check out. Or so I thought. I gleefully clicked the checkout button only to encounter more waiting and more watching of endless load icon animations. My new miniature enemies would mock me for what seemed like an eternity. They would spin, whirl and tumble enticingly. All the while showing just enough action to keep me believing.  Ultimately they would just load to a blank white page or the dreaded 503 server timeout message.  Eventually (well after 2:45pm EST by this point) I managed to get through the first checkout pages.

I was finally on to the next checkout step and I quickly added my shipping information. I have never seen my fingers type so fast. They flew across the keys like blurred Vienna sausages hungry for limited edition goodness. The site was starting to respond quickly again and I was excited at the prospect of making it through this traumatic experience with my zombie flesh green trophy.  Now it was just time to finalize things by simply clicking “Continue to PayPal.”

At this point I’m sure I have it locked down. I’ve ordered hundreds of items online. I know this is the last step.  I know what happens next. All I need to do is click through and my order and I will be whisked away to the safety and security of Paypal’s beefy servers. That’s what was supposed to happen anyway. Instead what happened was. . . nothing. It was Spacelab9 limbo.

I ran this marathon all the way to the end only to sputter out and collapse two steps from the finish line. So *bleeping* close. By now I knew it what was over, but the Rick Grimes in me refused to give up. I refreshed and reloaded. I went back to my saved cart and re-tried. The items were still there so game on.  Nobody puts baby in a corner.  I will not take NO for an answer!

Then I saw it: the dreaded message that confirmed there weren’t enough copies of The Walking Dead Flesh Green Vinyl to fill my order. I won’t repeat the profanities I spewed at this moment. My mother would be so ashamed.  Over three hours after it began, the fiasco was over and I had nothing to show for it. The mighty zombie collector had struck out.

Although I’m not much of an optimist, I decided we could all learn some valuable lessons from this. Here are some bullet points to take away from this experience:

• You can’t always get what you want.
• Sometimes the good guy doesn’t win.
• Life goes on.
• Sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you try.
• Never overestimate server capacity.
• Never underestimate the power of Walking Dead fans.
• I’ve got a problem and I need help.

To those of you that somehow managed to get your order in, congratulations. I’ll resist the urge to punch all 200 of you in your stupid cheating faces.  Seriously, I salute you. I put forth a valiant effort, but it just wasn’t meant to be. At least I can rest at night knowing it isn’t because I didn’t try hard enough.

Oh how I tried. I was relentless. When I had to pee my efforts went mobile and I took my phone with me just in case. I tried every internet browser I had. For the love of God I even opened Internet Explorer in the off chance the horrible boring browser served up the right voodoo magic to please your server’s gatekeeper enough to let me pass. It didn’t work.

I tried every reasonable order quantity known to man. Like the obsessed freak that I am I even sent you a message on facebook inquiring if I could somehow get my transaction through manually since I had the items added to my cart for hours. I even dropped the name of this site. (As if this obscure zombie obsessed corner of the internet would somehow sway you to help me. . . as if there was something you could do.)  It wasn’t a proud moment. I can’t help it. I was desperate and I needed my fix.  I was willing to do stuff and even thangs. That brings me full circle. I understand now. It’s not really your fault.

I know I said I hate you SpaceLab9, but I don’t.  It’s not you. It’s me. I hate myself and the Walking Dead obsessed, zombie collecting, merchandise consuming shell of a human being I’ve become. I hate the fact that my desire for a green vinyl disc with a Walking Dead label on it caused me to lose my composure. I hate that your servers made me flash back to website load times so painfully slow I relieved my childhood. It’s like I was a kid again accessing the internet in my dimly lit bedroom via free AOL dial up discs on my 56k modem. Finally, I hate myself because I know it’s only a matter of time before I’m cruising ebay desperately trying to convince myself that I’m not going to pay that much for a vinyl LP I’ll never listen to.

So I don’t hate you SpaceLab9. You make some very cool stuff.  I suppose I should apologize to you since I had to account for a large chunk of your bandwidth that day. Sorry about that. However, I do feel you owe me for at least 3 hours of my life I’ll never get back.  No worries. I’m not so obsessed you need to worry about your safety.  I’m willing to settle for a shiny new copy of The Walking Dead Original Soundtrack Vol. 1 in Zombie Flesh Green. 😉

Sincerely,

James aka “Head Zombie” – ZombieGift.com

Disclaimer: This is an editorial piece and the views and opinions here are only the author’s. Just in case you don’t understand parody or satire, this post isn’t meant as an insult to Spacelab9 or The Walking Dead. There’s no need to sue me. (I’m poor anyway!) I’m poking fun at myself and attempting to provide a little insight into the mind of an obsessed Walking Dead collector. It’s not a fun place to be sometimes!

About Spacelab9:

Come all ye pop culture fans, film and tv freaks, record collectors, comic fanatics, thrill seekers and escapees of the mundane… With their sights set on galactic conquest, SPACELAB9 has arrived to bring your favorite TV, Film, Comic and Pop Culture icons to life with deluxe edition vinyl records, posters and high quality art prints, web store exclusives and more. Enter the spacelab and see what thrills await… –SPACELAB9.com

For those interested, the regular black vinyl version of The Walking Dead soundtrack is still available for pre-order at the time of this post. Preorder via Spacelab9.com or amazon.